27 January 2022
Hyderabad

The dubbing industry has been dealt a heavy blow on Friday, as popular dubbing artiste A Srinivasa Murthy, who has been the voice of Rajasekhar, Vikram, Ajith, Suriya and Upendra among others in a career spanning almost 30 years, has passed away due to cardiac arrest on Friday in Chennai.

Beginning his journey as a model when he was three and half years for a vest and continuing in it until he was 15, Murthy has come a long way. His father the late AVN Murthy, a prominent playback singer and voice artiste encouraged him to start giving voice over for radio and TV commercials. His stint as a dubbing artist in films began in early ‘90s when writer Sri Ramakrishna made him to be the dubbing artist for a couple of supporting roles. His first major breakthrough came with Mani Ratnam’s Donga Donga where he dubbed for Prashanth. Soon he became the go-to man for Tamil dubbed ventures in Telugu as he dubbed for actors like Vineeth and Abbas. With Sunil Shetty starrer Anth, he graduated to powerful roles. His Tamil dubbing stint for Rajasekhar in Omkaram also helped the cause as he went on to associate with nearly 1,000 films in his career as a voice artiste.

Except for Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, Murthy dubbed for almost all the Tamil stars who had their Tamil pictures dubbed into Telugu. He was known for his versatility, range and for the effortless ease with which he shifted from a low pitch to high pitch. Some of his acclaimed stints include the voices he gave for Arjun in Oke Okkadu, Suriya in Singham series, Ghajini and 24, Vikram in Aparichutudu, Ajith in Gambler, Vivekam and Viswasam. In addition to being the voice of Daniel Craig for all of his Bond movies dubbed into Telugu, he was also the voice of Mohanlal in Janatha Garage and Jayaram in Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo. His recent stint as a dubbing artist was for Madhavan in Rocketry. He also dubbed for Sher Khan in Disney’s The Jungle Book.

For his dubbing to Rajasekhar in Sivayya, he was awarded his first Nandi in 1998. With his passing away, he leaves a huge void in the dubbing space.